


More Precious than Gold and Silver

by gentlezombie



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types, The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Angst, Fix-it fic, Happy Ending, M/M, No spoilers for the third movie, Post-Book, Reunion, Speechifying, Tolkien-esque prose, mention of canon character death, post-Battle of the Five Armies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-12
Updated: 2014-12-12
Packaged: 2018-03-01 05:34:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,778
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2761496
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gentlezombie/pseuds/gentlezombie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One brother survives the Battle of the Five Armies, the other is thought lost forever. Sometimes what is lost can be found again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	More Precious than Gold and Silver

**Author's Note:**

> This is movie fic in the sense that I have used the characters as imagined in the movie, and book fic in the sense that I cannot resist writing Tolkien-esque prose. If there is one fandom in need of fix-it fics, it's this one! I wrote this before seeing The Battle of the Five Armies so there are no movie-specific spoilers.

It is with a heavy heart that I write of the victory of the Battle of the Five Armies. For many it was a hollow victory, and to some it brought grief beyond measure.

Thorin Oakenshield, King under the Mountain, was slain, and Fíli and Kíli his nephews were thought to have perished with him. They were seen to fall as they stood back to back protecting their uncle until their arrows were spent and their swords were broken and the black tide of enemies swallowed them.

Yet only one of them was brought back from the field of the fallen and thought mortally wounded; but of his brother no trace was found, although they searched for many a day and night. He was but one of many who were lost on the field that day, yet one who was mourned more keenly even than Thorin their King.

Against all expectation, the last son of Durin’s line survived. He would never recover full use of his left arm, nor would the horror of war ever fully leave his eyes, but he was named heir to the throne by the King on his deathbed. There was no dispute, for the line of succession was clear, and great deeds done in battle had not yet been forgotten.

Thus Kíli son of Dís became the new King under the Mountain. The young King was well-loved, and he had many good advisors. In time the kingdom prospered, and music was once again heard in the hollow halls of old.

The King himself never played the harp again, nor picked up a bow.

All who are familiar with history know that stories seldom run smoothly from beginning to the end. Life is a tangle of strange twists and turns. Here such a turn is, fittingly, brought about by a stranger.

Three years had passed since that victory when a stranger approached the gates of the Mountain. The dwarf stated his business quietly and politely enough. He wore a stained green cloak, and when the guards searched him they uncovered a ramshackle collection of weapons, most of them of human make. They made jibes at their quality and gave the stranger side-long looks, for surely one had to be half-witted to march up to the gate and demand an audience of the King.

“I have something of his,” was all he said, although among his possessions they didn’t find anything that could possibly befit a King.

To their surprise, an audience was admitted; a private one, which was exceedingly rare. Rumour leaped on quick feet through the halls and walkways inside the Mountain: that someone from the King’s travelling days, when he had worked up and down the lands like a vagabond, had come to see him.

The stranger was brought to one of the smaller chambers (though to his eyes it seemed big enough) and the door was closed behind him. Ceremony had been abandoned in favour of haste and secrecy.

For a moment he thought himself alone. But then some small movement, a stirring of air, alerted him to a presence at the back of the room.

There, on a carved chair not unlike a throne, sat the King. Evidently he had been reading, for a pile of documents lay discarded on the floor. Pale and beautiful he was, by dwarven and elvish standards; his beard was neatly braided, and long black hair fell over his shoulders. His clothes were of fine woodland silk, embroidered with silver thread. He still wore an archer’s bracers of supple black leather.

Yet a shadow was cast over him. The pale light of the pure stone at his breast, the purest of them all, cast blue moons under his eyes. Dark and still, he turned the stone in his hands over and over with the look of someone lost in a distant past. He was the Black King, the King of Sorrow, whose rule had brought joy to others but not to himself.

Presently the King stirred, and raised his head, and fixed the stranger with a sharp look.

“Who is it who comes so brazenly to our gate and demands an audience of the King?”

The stranger had frozen in place as the king spoke. In a low voice he said:

“I believe I am one who has that right, my lord. But to your question there is no simple answer.”

The King made as if to rise at the sound of that voice, and then he grew still as stone.

“Speak,” he said.

“I cannot tell you my name, for I do not rightly know it. For a long time I have lived in the wilderness where names hold little meaning, even great ones. I am a friend to the Rangers of the North, the Dúnedain as they call themselves; for on their travels they found me and treated me as one of their own. I was gravely wounded and robbed of thought and understanding, hiding in the wildlands like a sick animal. They feared the shadow of death was upon me; but I grew stronger in their care, even though the past still remained veiled to me.

“From them I learned that there had been a great battle, and that I must have taken part in it, for I was wounded by goblin axe and sword and spear. Perhaps I fled, or was taken captive by retreating enemies who wanted a hostage to bargain with. Either way the thought of battle filled me with misery and disgust. I did not wish to remember.

“For three years I lived among the Rangers and learned their ways. Although in my dreams I heard the deep whisper of stone, I grew to love equally the whisper of wind in the trees or the rustle of yellow leaves underfoot, and told myself I was content. I wasn’t one of them, but I shared their joys and sorrows and the sense of a fateful weight upon them. Although at times the desire to find my own people arose in me, what little I could remember frightened me. I knew only that a blackness had fallen over me and my kin, and everything had fallen apart.

“In the third year dreams started to plague me. They were glimpses of another life, of danger and glory and kinship. I had a strong sense of something terrible which would take place if I would not act. In one of my dreams I stood in a chamber washed with pure white light. Upon a stone table I saw someone sleeping, or so I thought; but when I stepped closer, I saw that his chest was still. His right arm was folded across his chest, and in it he held a magnificent jewel, but his right hand lay on the table, as though in his last moments he’d been reaching for something out of reach. I couldn’t see his face, and for some reason this made me despair. I dreamt often of death. Sometimes it was bloody and cruel, sometimes beautiful and peaceful, a respite after long suffering; but though I was not afraid of death, the dreams filled me with horror.

“In the end, I could not keep this from my companions. That is when they finally revealed to me the circumstances in which they found me. Their suspicions about who I was had grown to a certainty, but they did not dare to unsettle the balance of power during the first years of your ruling. They made the decision not tell me, and I do not hate them for it, although much suffering could perhaps have been avoided had they decided differently. And perhaps it would only have led to another disaster.”

The stranger had been talking for a long time. He was clearly unaccustomed to making such long speeches, yet he had the pleasant cadence of a storyteller in his voice. The King had grown ever paler upon listening. His fingers were white on the arms of the chair.

“I have come, my King, to ask for confirmation for what the Rangers have told me, although I already know the answer in my heart.”

He threw back his hood and let his cloak fall to the floor. His hair was long and wild, cut short at the sides and braided down his back in a foreign pattern. It still shone like sun-warmed gold. His beard was short and shaggy, barely passable in human lands. Scars covered one half of his face, thin white lines healed long ago. They pulled the corner of his mouth into a crooked grin, although his eyes were very serious.

The King rose and faltered. He was gripping the Arkenstone to his chest as though it was his heart.

“Brother,” he said, and the shackles of kingship fell from him, and he rushed to embrace the stranger who was not a stranger at all. “Fíli, son of Dis,” he said in his brother’s ear, and let out a desperate sound as strong arms encircled his waist.

“Kíli, brother mine,” Fíli said. His voice trembled, but his arms were steady. “I knew I had lost something precious. Now I know it was you.”

“You were lost,” Kíli whispered, “lost, dead, gone, and I had to go on alone.”

He didn’t need to say any more. His grief lay over everything like a fine coat of silver.

“I thought you lost. I will not forgive them for keeping you from me. You don’t know. You cannot know.” His eyes grew lost and dark like long sleepless nights. “I was a ghost; there was no joy left in me, nor life, yet I had to be King. And that is what I became.”

Fíli looked at his brother and saw a strength born from sorrow. He heard what was not said; that his brother had become King at the cost of all other things. He had brought healing to lands torn by war and fire, yet he could not heal himself. Perhaps that was too much to ask of anyone.

Still it felt like there was an invisible wall between them. Neither of them knew quite what to say or what to do. There was so much to be fixed, so much that couldn’t be fixed. Hesitantly Fíli raised his hand to touch Kíli’s face. His cheek was pale and oddly still. Only his eyes betrayed emotion. The stillness cast a kind of majesty over his young face. Fíli could imagine the endless days and nights which had brought about the change in his brother who in his memory was always in motion, running, laughing, making faces.

“You are not alone now.” Yet in that moment they were both alone. Fíli didn’t dare to move his hand, to move at all, for his memory still felt frail and patched like worn-out cloth. He couldn’t trust it enough. He couldn’t trust on their memories to match.

He looked down and saw the Arkenstone swinging on a chain between them.

“I kept it,” Kíli whispered. “It reminded me of Uncle, and of all those who were gone. Sad memories, yet they comforted me. I never had any desire for it, nor for treasure, nor for anything in this world.”

“Let go of it, brother.” Fíli touched the thick golden chain around his brother’s neck. His eyes still unreadable, Kíli brushed his hair out of the way, and Fíli’s fingers brushed against the back of his neck as he reached for the clasp. The priceless gem fell on the floor with a high sound.

Kíli blinked at the sound, for a moment lost as though in a waking dream; and then he looked at his brother, and believed what he saw, and knew that his world had changed. A terrible weight he’d barely been aware of left him.

He fell against his brother without a thought for anything else in the world. This whirlwind Fíli recognised, mad with joy and careless in his love, and he laughed as he stumbled backwards and didn’t care that there were tears on his cheeks. He held on as tightly as he could, as he had always done.

For a long time they stood like that, clutching at each other, unable to come up with words. There were no words for this. Perhaps in time the moment would be caught in a song, played on a golden harp by skilled fingers; but that was a long time coming.

Fíli was cradling Kíli’s head against his chest, carding his fingers through the thick black hair, as he had done countless times before. He felt his brother’s heart beating against his chest, steady and soothing like stone, and he felt hot puffs of breath through the layers of his clothes.

Kíli was touching him. His hands wandered in restless circles along his back and down his arms. Each touch was a memory, each brush of skin against skin an echo of careless days of hunting and play. Fíli remembered what it was like to cross blades with his brother, remembered Kíli’s face when he was almost invariably bested. He remembered his brother’s smug joy after shooting an arrow through a golden ring, thrown high in the air. He remembered them running and sweating and laughing, playing hide and seek in old tunnels, sometimes getting caught on purpose.

Kíli’s hands reached his face and trailed along his nose and cheeks, mapping the familiar and the new. His finger traced a scar to the curve of his lips, and Fíli shivered. Kíli was looking at him now. His eyes were still the dark eyes of the mountain-king, lined with shadows; but in their depth a light had been rekindled.

“I desired for nothing, brother, for I’ve never desired for anything as I’ve desired you.”

Kíli grabbed him by the hair and kissed him as though it was his right, and it was. His brother and lover in arms. Image upon image flashed through Fíli’s mind as the ways of his memory were finally opened to him. He shuddered under the onslaught. It was no wonder that this should be the key. The passion with which his brother threw himself at him could have crumbled mountains.

Fíli stumbled and fell against a stone table, scattering ink and quill. Quick as a flash, Kíli was on top of him, pushing him down.

“Brother,” he said and stilled.

Fíli blinked, dazed, and turned his head to look around him.

Spread upon the table was a great map of all the lands that stretched between Erebor and the Blue Mountains and beyond. Upon this map was spread a prince of the line of Durin, the golden one, the lost one. His hair spilled out in the inked lakes and deserts, his strong fingers found purchase at the mountain-tops.

In his dream it was Kíli who lay upon the stone table, and he was dead. But now it was Fíli who was laid out over a dream of the world, and he was more alive than he’d ever been.

It was strange enough to make him laugh. He pulled his brother down to him and brought their mouths together. He lifted one foot on the table, heedless of his boots, to fit Kíli between his legs, and he held on tight as his brother surged against him. It was more precious than all the silver and gold in the world to see doubt chased away from those dark, haunted eyes. The parchment of the map tore, as did clothes, under hasty fingers.

“Careful,” Fíli said, and fished out a pair of daggers from his tunic.

“You really are my brother,” Kíli said with a grin too young for his face by many a year.

“I really am,” Fíli said. The daggers clattered to the floor as he was divested of his clothes, leather and linen bunched up under him and Kíli’s fine black silks pooling on the floor.

There would be time enough later to examine scars, to mourn for what was lost and to talk of sober things. Now they celebrated, privately, just the two of them. Skin sang for skin, touch for touch. In the end, they shared one breath, dark hair tangled with light, limbs entwined, two hearts beating together the sweet drums of homecoming.

Life is strange and full of wonder. The joys and sorrows measured out for us even the most experienced chronicler cannot predict. Sometimes the cup is filled to overflowing with joy. Some call it fate. Some call it luck, or a blessing.

The two young warriors, descendants of kings, knew they were so much luckier than most.

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first LotR/Hobbit fic I've ever published. It has taken me an astonishing number of years to gather the courage to do that. I would love to hear your thoughts!


End file.
